SEVERAL years ago, a female member of the Punjab Assembly shared some troubling details with me. According to her, the majority of women on reserved seats in the assembly did not regularly attend the proceedings of the house. This was not in itself a particularly surprising piece of information; after all, when many male legislators have erratic attendance records, why indeed should women be any different?

It was troubling, however, to learn that even when the women did attend the assembly sessions they rarely paid attention to the business of the day. Instead, many if not most remained preoccupied with chatting and gossiping with each other, treating the proceedings more as a social gathering than a legislative session.

The issue, she emphasised, was not a partisan one involving one or another political party; across the board, most of the women filling the reserved seats were relations of important men, granted the seats on the basis of political favour. This was not an issue particular to Punjab, she insisted; the legislatures of other provinces, to the extent the seats had been filled at all, suffered a similar fate.

The situation at the provincial level is replicated at the national level. According to a report, Bridging the Fault Lines? Rethinking the Gender Quota Approach in Pakistan, authored by Dr Farzana Bari, women’s reticence to participate is exacerbated by the discriminatory treatment meted out to them. In the words of Nafisa Shah, a parliamentarian quoted in the report, women were regularly treated as “extras” and “relegated to the back benches” of parliament, away from the action and out of the conversation.

Criticism of women who fill the reserved seats stands the risk of being incorporated in the general misogynistic tone and tenor of Pakistani politics.

In the words of Shaista Pervez, who served as secretary of the women’s caucus at the time the report was researched, women parliamentarians also prioritised party identity over gender identity. This prevented them from coming together in a non-partisan way to draft and pass legislation that would improve the lot of women in the country.

Gender quotas, many social scientists have long believed, are instruments via which male dominance over a country’s political system can be challenged and eventually eliminated. In theory, reserved seats for women insert women in a process in which, if society was fair and equal, they would have had half the share of seats, equal roughly to their share of the population.

Pakistan, along with most other countries in the world, is not a gender-equal society, hence the need for quotas, providing opportunities for those who are otherwise denied chances in life — and not owing to lack of ability but because of their gender. Present and visible, the women filling these seats, it is assumed, will pave the way for eventual equal representation, which would be the occasion for abandoning the equalising mechanism of quotas. That, at least, is the theory behind the practice.

The Pakistani reality, however, routinely challenges and eviscerates theoretical truths. The case of quotas is one example and Dr Bari’s report details one compelling reason behind reserved seats filled by unqualified women. Even while the legislatures themselves are democratically elected, few of Pakistan’s political parties actually have elections to select their leaders. The result is the dominance of dynastic politics and the perpetuation of a male-dominated political system that prevents talented and qualified women from rising through the party ranks.

Because political parties rarely keep records of party membership, it is difficult to even know the number of women joining political parties. It is noted that even in cases where women’s political participation is touted as a mark of success, such as PTI’s 2014 dharna, the political stage continues to be dominated by men with few women leaders being given the opportunity to speak to the crowd.

The NGO sector has played its own role in drawing qualified women away from the political realm and into the non-profit one. As the report details, this redirection of female talent has led not only to the depoliticisation of the issue of women’s rights, but also to the belief that it is technical rather than structural solutions that are key to empowerment. In simple terms, the focus is on the provision of goods and services via the non-profit sector rather than changing mindsets and making empowerment and its promise central to the political agenda of one or another party.

The question of women and quotas is made even thornier because criticism of women who fill the reserved seats stands the risk of being incorporated in the general misogynistic tone and tenor of Pakistani politics. Pointing out the fact that the women who fill reserved seats are not qualified or not given capacity building training to fulfil their roles stands the risk of becoming the basis of the elimination of quotas themselves.

This, of course, would be even worse than the present situation, an entirely male-dominated political set-up where women are abstract entities whose lives are legislated and controlled by those who have little idea about them. It is not a consequence particularly difficult to imagine in an ever-conservative Pakistan; after all, as the report documents, over a third of registered female voters in KP were apparently not permitted to vote in the last election.

Two solutions suggested in the report seem to have the potential to rescue gender quotas from their current ineffectual state. First, other sectors including the NGO sector should recognise and promote the necessity of political participation and a crucial part of empowerment. More controversially, political parties that do not hold elections within their own structures, and consequently do not elevate women to powerful positions within the party, should not be allowed to fill reserved seats. This last measure would ensure that the women who fill the reserved seat quotas have some experience of political processes and can fulfil the serious responsibilities with which they are entrusted on behalf of Pakistan’s women.

The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.

rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2016